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Live from the Dubai 24 Hour Part V

The seventh annual Dubai 24h race is
over. OVER! And you’ve missed out on a lot of very excellent stuff.

Luckily, we’ve deprived ourselves of
sleep, food and medical care to drag you from the internet to the Middle East
and into our eyes. Which actually sounds a bit weird. But you know what we
mean. Hopefully.

Anyway.

Click on to see what’s happened since
our last update.

If you think race tracks are awash with
rubber marbles during the F1, you should see the Dubai Autodrome after 24 hours
of racing. Off the racing line, the track looks like a big, lethal abacus.

The sheer breadth of mechanical ability
across the field means racing’s always entertaining – and occasionally
hilarious. The Pizza Company Racing Team’s Honda Integra DC-5, Le Duigou
Racing’s 3.0-litre 1-series (with five doors, as it goes), and the #87 Suzuki
Swift play an endlessly entertaining game of snakes and ladders.

German manufacturers have absolutely
destroyed the field this year – for several hours, nine out of the top ten cars
were built there.

Dusty sand plagued racing early this
morning. Which is more surprising than it seems considering the city’s in a
giant great big desert.

The Autodrome’s thoroughfare’s right
next to the grandstand, and as cars returned to watch the closing laps, they
kicked up a masses of the stuff, which blew onto the track and into the pit.

As you’d imagine, said grandstand
flanks the home straight. As cars barrelled down it they took the dust with
them and deposited it when they slowed down for turn one, which made it
massively slippy. Great for the spectators, though – there was some spectacular dori-dori.

Sunrise over a race track – it has the
uncanny effect of making you feel very happy indeed.

As the first of the cars came pitted at
sunrise, the temperature began its ascent from 15 degrees centigrade to 24.

It gave us the first glimpse of how
they’d survived the night, too – the #61 Seat Leon Supercopa faired remarkably well.

It was a good day to be a racing SLS.
More on that later…

The morning after the night before –
Exagon Engineering’s 997 GT3R suffered major rear-end damage…

…as did Gulf’s rather delicious Aston
Martin Vantage N24 GT24.

Luckily, the team had many, many rolls
of gaffer tape. In fact, save for the pit girls, very few things and people
weren’t covered in gaffer tape.

This man wishes to remain anonymous.
He’s in charge of monitoring the 40mph speed limit in the pitlane. “It’s for
health and safety reasons – you can create a lot of problems with sparks and
debris if you don’t observe the limit”.

Just as we began to scoffing at his
bureaucracy, there was the unmistakable sound of naked metal on tarmac…

…to our compound amazement, car 22 –
Tsunami RT’s Porsche 997GT3 Cup car – wobbled past on three wheels,
occasionally loosing its balance and dipping onto the brake discs. There were
sparks, there was debris, there was a man with a very worthy job.

Our mystery human GATSO liked to fill
his time between busting pitlane hoons and deftly making points by checking the
speed of the racers. This made us like him more.

Fach Auto Tech employed a unique method
to cooling its 997 GT3 R’s driver – first, a small lady wafted cool in by
vigorously opening and closing the door. The a man wondered up and switched his
leaf blower – replete with gaffer tape – onto the drivers face.

In this year’s event, he drove car #100
– a 370Z – along with fellow GT Academy drivers, Jordan Tresson, Bryan
Heitkotter and Jann Mardenborough. But was a car full of gamers – a racing
first - a bit… ambitious?

Lucas says: “If I’m worried about other
gamers being worse drivers [than other drivers], I would have a problem. The
other guys are great drivers and put in a very good performance.”

Lucas adds: “I’ve had a great race in
Dubai. I always enjoy 24-hour events, even though there is a lot of pressure
for everybody involved in a gamer car.

“The faster cars make the race a little
bit confusing, too – many have more power, but you don’t know how good the
drivers are. They overtake on the straight, then you overtake them in the
corners. It is a great challenge and I had no big moments so I am happy with my performance.”

And
it&rsquo;s all over!

RESULTS

1st Mercedes SLS Abu Dhabi
by Black Falcon

2nd Mercedes SLS by Helico Motorsport

3rd Mercedes SLS by Helico Motorsport

The all-gamer Nissan 370Z placed 26th
overall and 3rd in its class, the Suzuki Swift finished in 58th
and 9th in its class and Racing Divas’ Renault Clio RS Cup scooped 4th
place in its class and a staggering 39th overall.

Racing celebrations erred on the
interesting – throughout the 35-minute ceremony this group of tradition
Emiratis performed a Hrbia song and dance routine.

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